Ticket stub regained

• Lucky You (5/4, Crit)--Largely a good film--the poker stuff is as good as I've seen. But the boy-girl stuff is utterly unconvincing, and even though I'm a big Drew fan, I gotta say I don't think it's Bana's fault.
• Children of Men (1/14, Orange)--Wow, we're way back now, aren't we? This was my ex's no. 1 film of 2006, and while I liked it a lot, I ranked it only no. 2 among the Tres Amigos' films--which is to say, in order, del Toro (El laberinto del fauno), Cuarón, and González Iñárritu (Babel). Still, I need to see this again in the not too distant future--it has stayed with me, and not just the shock of [SPOILER ALERT] My Future Wife Julianne Moore's getting blasted out of the story early in the second act.
• Breach (2/24, Crit)--Chris Cooper, you know what I'm sayin'? Eleven-plus months later, all I remember is that what might have been really pedestrian worked because of Chris Cooper. Hell, I think I'll put Breast Men in my Netflix queue! Maybe not.
• The Astronaut Farmer (2/23, Crit)--Sweet, but I never believed it for a minute.
• The Pink Panther (1963) (3/11, Crit)--Another one that, against all convention, I had never seen. And, sorry, I never need to see again. Love Dr. Strangelove, but I don't get all jiggly about Peter Sellers.
• Grindhouse (4/6, Crit)--Found Rodriguez's Planet Terror amusing enough, but I was ready for it to be over some time before it was. Tarantino's Death Proof, on the other hand, was sheer adrenaline-rush feminist kickass.
• Little Children (1/13, Crit)--I'm never going to tell while I find it disconcerting as well as arousing to see Kate Winslet naked--them what needs to know knows, them what don't doesn't need to. Anyway, good flick, but it seduced me (along with Election) into buying the new Tom Perrotta novel, whereupon I discovered how much the guy has been helped by real screenwriters and directors.
• Les climats (Climates) (2/25, Crit)--Deliberate--well, let's just say slow--depiction of an affair with everything stacked against it. Turkish.
• El laberinto del fauno (Pan's labyrinth) (1/15, Crit)--Went into this not expecting to say, "Well, damn: no doubt: this is the best film of 2006," but that's pretty much the reaction I had. Having seen it again recently, I'm less confident of that assessment, but absolutely certain that it's a nearly perfect fairytale for liberal grown-ups.

OK, that's the 140 or so flicks I saw in the movie theater in 2007. Now let's add a few things that eluded me in the theater but which I caught up to on Netflix and turned out to be among my favorites of the year:

• Colma: The Musical (c. 11/25)--This was one of those movies that about three minutes in I thought, "I've got to make sure [my daughter] Jen sees this!" Low-budget, low-production-values brilliance: a sort of Seinfeldian musical about nothing, except that it's everything: what are recent graduates in a suburb of San Francisco famous only for its cemeteries gonna do w/ their lives? Listen and learn.
• Shi gan (Time) (c. 11/21)--Think Vertigo via Seoul. Not sure why this nailed me so completely, but if I was wrong, I'm stuck with the disc, which I just bought, along with . . .
• La Faute à Fidel! (Blame it on Fidel!) (c. 11/16)--Just flat one of the best films of the year, a child's look at politics, and at adults who either (1) don't act on what they believe, (2) act fatally on what they believe, (3) or don't examine their beliefs enough to know whether they're worth acting fatally on. Only the profoundly sober-faced protagonist (played by one Nina Kervel-Bey, who will have a long, splendid career if either God or Fidel exists) really takes political questions seriously. Not long after, I rented Louis Malle's Murmur of the Heart, which would make a great double feature with this.

The ticket stub captive

This should wrap it up for the year and allow me to start on my year's-best lists--though I'll be Netflixing a few more 2007 flicks for a while.

• The Ex (5/19, Orange)--Had a hell of a time remembering what the hell this was, since IMDb shows it under the alternate title of Fast Track. Mainly I remember that it tried hard to make us think of There's Something About Mary, even down to [SPOILER ALERT] the fake handicapped suitor, but all in all, forgetting it wasn't a disaster. Wouldn't have gone but for being in Orange already for . . .
• Jindabyne (5/19, Orange)--Which in turn was kinda reminiscent of Deliverance, but without any squeals. Didn't believe the reviews that Gabriel Byrne and My Future Wife Laura Linney would whiff together again, and in fairness, this is much better than the ridiculous P.S., but that's not a high bar.
• Direktøren for det hele (The boss of it all) (5/27, IFC)--Oh. My. God. One of the goofiest, funniest comedies I saw all year, directed by that master of the belly laugh . . . Lars von Fucking Trier? This is straight out of the Preston Sturges playbook: to avoid the ire of the people who are going to hate him eventually, the company director pretends to be a lackey and hires an actor to play the company director. Hilarity ensues.
• Brand Upon the Brain (5/27, VE)--More Guy Maddin madness: the protagonist, named Guy Maddin, returns to the lighthouse-orphanage where he was raised to deal with repressed memories, weird science, and disappointed love. Narrated my his best pal Isabella Rossellini. Oh, and the air conditioner was out in the theater, so I got a free pass to use later!

Which reminds me of something I saw later at the same place and complained about a projector meltdown and got another freebie, but I don't seem to have a ticket stub for it . . .

• Delirious (?? [Sunday of Labor Day weekend, maybe? yes, good bet: I see only three films for the 9/1 Manhattan trip, so let's guess that], VE)--Amusing interplay between Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt, as Tom DiCillo mines the Living in Oblivion lode. Brilliant cameo by Declan MacManus as Elvis Costello.

[Moments after I logged off: yes! I remember now! Dude took my ticket stub when he gave me my free pass! Glad I remembered that, else I'd be haunted by all the ticket stubs I must have lost, but now I'm secure: had one stolen, lost one on the Delta-hellish return from vacation.]

OK, I was wrong: I'm not going to finish tonight. But while I'm on the subject of things I don't have a ticket stub for but I know I saw:

• The Simpsons Movie (early August, Savoy, Ill.)--Some people complained that this was nothing more than three episodes of the series strung together. Well, yeah? Have you produced as much creativity in your life as there is in three good episodes of the TV show? Me neither.
  

The Guermantes ticket stub

• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (5/26, Crit)--Didn't particularly want to go, but the reviews cleared the low downtown bar, so I did. Look, the first one was brilliant great fun, but that was apparently all the fun the franchise had in it. Please let it die now!
• In the Land of Women (4/20, Crit)--Another one that barely reached the downtown bar--but this one also had the selling point of a Stephen Trask score. Well, whatever: waste of time.
• Becket (1964) (3/17, Crit)--Remarkably, I'd never seen this. Not great in any way, but geez, Burton and O'Toole--you know you're gonna have fun. I notice that this is the same year as Burton's filmed stage Hamlet that I watched a few weeks back--and of course he's only a year or so into the romance of his life. Also a kick to see (briefly) a young Siân Phillips--later Livia in I, Claudius.
• Ocean's Thirteen (6/9, Crit)--Yeah, this franchise is getting a little long in the tooth, too, but if the first one wasn't as much fun as the first Pirates, the last two at least haven't made me wish I were somewhere else.
• The Namesake (3/23, Crit)--This works the culture-confusion bit nicely for the first two acts, but it staggers gasping to the finish line, if I may work the metaphor-confusion bit.
• Amazing Grace (2/25, Crit)--Excellent, moving historical piece. But is there any way we could petition to see more of Michael Gambon? Yeah, yeah, he's got the Dumbledore gig now, but I mean real roles in real movies.
• The Birds (1963) (3/18, Crit)--Oh, this is a good one to see in a crowd, many of whom are first-timers. I had intended to see this a year or two earlier, the first time the Criterion showed it as a Sunday morning Movies and Mimosas feature, but I had a guest and ultimately went to something else a couple of hours later--just as this was getting out. I told everyone leaving that a bunch of sea gulls were congregating on the Green . . .
• Gwoemul (The host) (3/24, Crit)--Oh, yes. Have I used the word fun too often in this post? Well, too bad. Anthony Lane on the monster: "It looks like Broderick Crawford crossed with a Venus flytrap."
• Cobra Verde (1988) (4/7, IFC)--Nobody has ever been better at playing a lunatic-with-his-own-logic than Klaus Kinski, and nobody was better at directing him than Werner Herzog. This was their last film together, Kinski's last film but two, and, I gather, his last that wasn't a mistake. Watch it for free on your computer if you're a Netflixer (and if you aren't, what are you doing here?).
• Colo(u)r Me Kubrick (4/7, IFC)--Is it just me, or is it a little weird that a guy who is at the center of a film about nobodies inhabiting a somebody's being later stars as a nobody inhabiting a somebody's being? Whatever, it's not a great film, but it's a tour de force for Malkovich--a one-joke movie that, at < class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">minutes, doesn't overstay the joke's welcome.
• Offside (4/7, Quad)--Subversion of Shari`a restrictions on young women's public behavior in the context of Iran's final game to clinch a place in the 2002 World Cup--what the hell more do you want?

Ticket stub and Gomorrah

• Reign Over Me (3/31, Post 14)--Haven't we already seen Adam Sandler do this shtick in a much better film? I think I've seen all of Mike Binder I need to see.
• GoodFellas (1990) (6/16, Crit)--Didn't see this when it was new, didn't see what all the buzz was about when I finally saw it on video, but yeah, it really does fit nicely between The Godfather and The Sopranos, doesn't it? But tell me: what does it say about Ray Liotta that his most notable role in the past five years is a self-parody in Bee Movie? That he's a good sport and doesn't take himself too seriously? Well, that's nice, but . . .
• Dnevnoi Dozor (Daywatch) (6/15, Crit)--Holy fucking shit! Coolest car-action sequence ever, even though they gave it away in the trailer and I'd already seen it a dozen times, and coolest treatment of subtitles ever. (Can't remember: did Nightwatch (Nochnoi Dozor) do the same trick w/ the titles?) I'm in line already for Twilight Watch (Сумеречный дозор).
• Gracie (6/2, Orange)--Yeah, it's completely clichéd and unsurprising, but the kid has an intensity that makes you believe it. Plus, it's football (no, not "football," football), and I'm a sucker for the beautiful game.
• Knocked Up (6/2, Post 14)--Weirdest thing about this flick is that after I raved about it to my daughter and son-in-law, who, after all, introduced me to Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen via Freaks & Geeks, they didn't love it. Weirder still, they did love the much less interesting and much less funny Superbad. Who are these people? Anyway, right up there w/ The Simpsons Movie in terms of most-lung-tissue-laughed-up-for-2007.
• La Vie en Rose (6/17, Crit)--Spectacular performance by Cotillard, and hey, you can't ever have too much Piaf, but I just felt like I'd seen this a zillion times before.
• The Lookout (3/31, Orange)--Within reach of memorable, but ultimately just a speed bump in the 2007 cinematic highway. Mysterious Skin was supposed to be a breakthrough for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but he's just been treading water since. Geez! Just looked at his IMDb page--had no idea how long he'd been treading water before MS. Real deal or flash in the pan? At least one of those 2008/2009 projects had better show some serious shit.
• The Hoax (3/31, Crit)--I like to think I'm not just a sexist asshole, but it's hard for me to think about this film without seeing Julie Delpy with her nightgown open. And she has a total of maybe three minutes of screentime. OK, but the movie, the movie: yes, Richard Gere's prosthetic nose is thoroughly believable, as are both alternative narratives. Well, OK, maybe not thoroughly. Hard not to compare this with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which I need to see again, I think.
• Once (6/2, Orange)--Distracting, 'cause I know that guy, and his girlfriend too. But a lovely little film--the sort of thing that makes the death-defying roadside walk to Orange worthwhile, at the same time I'm pissed off it didn't come downtown. Also, what a star Dublin is in this--never wanted to go as much as right after seeing this.
• Letters from Iwo Jima (1/21, Crit)--I've blurred this with Flags of Our Fathers to the extent that I was sure I'd seen this at Post 14, and that an alarm went off in the theater late in the film, and everyone ignored it, perfectly content to be burned alive rather than leave early. But no, that was the other one; and this one was maybe even better.
• Waitress (5/13, Crit)--Call me a sentimental simp (you know who you are), but this worked on me from the get-go, even the goo-goo end-credits song. Guess I should see it again sometime and try to sort out how much the sad story behind the story pulled me along. Bonus question: who else first saw Keri Russell in Eight Days a Week? Film Fest New Haven, 1997, '98? Anyway, don't bother to rent it; I'm just showing off.

Within a budding ticket stub

• 3:10 to Yuma (9/9, Crit)--Fine filmmaking, fine acting, probably too fine for the material. Saw the 1957 original not long after, and its rougher edges (and rougher-edged actors) do the material better justice.
• Rocket Science (8/17, Crit)--This was pushed as this year's Napoleon Dynamite, which was not a great selling point for the one moviegoer in the country who dismissed that flick as Quirkiness for Quirkiness' Sake. But I went anyway, 'cause it was downtown, and while I'd say it's not altogether devoid of QfQS syndrome, most of the quirkiness here is in service of a story that reads as real.
• Joshua (7/13, Crit)--Wow! I'd seen the trailer several times and, as is my wont, read only enough of the Times review to know that it came up to the Downtown Threshold, so I went in thinking there was some actual supernatural shit going on, like in all those flicks in the Creepy Little Kid subgenre. So to discover that there's not made it way creepier. Clearly Jacob Kogan has a great acting future, unless of course he actually is a psychopath, which I'm fully prepared to believe. Also, you know what? Wait, let me check something . . . Yes! Three years older than my daughter, so, having recently lost Frances McDormand to an egregious grammatical error on one of the Fargo DVD extras, let's just start referring to My Future Wife Vera Farmiga.
• Ratatouille (6/30, Post 14)--Yup, the Bird dude does this stuff about as well as anybody. My best six-year-old friend is currently too old to enjoy animation, but once she gets past that stage, this is a likely birthday or Xmas gift.
• Live Free or Die Hard (6/30, Post 14)--Please don't report me to the authorities, but this is the first film in the franchise I've seen, but even without a thorough grounding in the John McCain--er, McClane--mythos, I thought it was a hoot and a half, though it was tough seeing Seth Bullock (aka Timothy Olyphant) cast as a nasty, nasty villain.
• A Mighty Heart (6/23, Orange)--OK, I'm not gonna say that AJ got screwed out of an Oscar nom. here, but what I will say is that if a certain product of the Yale Drama School--who, don't get me wrong, is absolutely fantastic, one of my favorites, deserves almost all the accolades she's ever received--had done the accent-and-complexion thing for this (granted, it would have been more difficult for her, since she's blond, not to mention lots older), she would have gotten her 15th nomination (damn! now I've given it away!). Anyway, the film does exactly what it sets out to do, which is to grab you and shake you and make you ineffably sad and at the same time vaguely hopeful for the future of a species that has at least three or four such people in it.
• Blonde Venus (1932) (6/24, Crit)--Well, how could I resist: Marlene, Cary, $4? But jesus, god, what an awful, awful film. Not currently available on DVD, so unless you can find it on VHS, you'll just have to take my word for its not even being worth seeing Dietrich sing in a gorilla suit. Hell, it's not even worth seeing her swimming in the ostensible nude at the start, and that's the highlight! Good god--did I mention how awful this is?
• Brooklyn Rules (6/23, Orange)--Oh, right: another one so memorable I had to look it up. A Sopranos writer--must've been the final snoozen.
• Sicko (7/1, Orange)--The theory of Moore's filmmaking strategy seems to be tipping from a balance between laughmaking and angrymaking to the splenetic side of the scale. Well, I did laugh some, but mostly I seethed. What kind of fucking country is this anyway, that we just lug our poor sick people out onto the sidewalk? And what the fuck kind of Democratic Party is it whose candidates aren't all hammering on this? Did I mention that Moore does angrymaking well?
• 1408 (6/30, Post 14)--OK, I guess I need to take another look at The Shining, but didn't that film, which I decided the last time I saw it, maybe ten years ago, I don't really like much, push all these buttons much better? Pretty shitty year for Cusack.
• Hairspray (7/20, Crit)--Oh, I so wanted to love this. So let me accentuate the things I did love: (1) Waters's cameo; (2) Amanda Bynes's performance (and face). I'm just not going to say anything about Travolta, and you can't make me.
• The Nanny Diaries (8/24, Crit)--Another one I desperately wanted to like, if only for Scarlett's sake, but it was pretty much a waste of time. But look at this on IMDb: Johansson's in another upcoming Woody Allen movie, w/ Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, and My Future Wife Patricia Clarkson! I'm in!
• Cama adentro (Live-in maid) (9/1, Quad)--I didn't go all gaga over this as a lot of people did, but I gotta say, it's stories like this one, of a love-hate relationship between bankrupt employer and self-sufficient employee, that get told only in (foreign) films, not in (American) movies, and that take me to Manhattan every month or two.
• Crazy Love (6/10, Crit)--Again, to quote Stan Marsh, this is some pretty fucked-up shit going on here. So your jealous boyfriend blinds you with acid. When he gets out, you do what? You marry him? Hey, you can't make this shit up: maybe not one of the best docs of the year, but certainly one that got my attn.
• Mr. Brooks (6/13, Crit)--Barely came up to the Downtown Threshold--never would have seen it if I'd had to take a busride. And I would have saved seven bucks and suffered nothing. Kevin: get help!

Swann's ticket stub

• Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (11/18, Post 14)--An earnest effort to be both magical and fatalist, but the magic just isn't there.
• Lions for Lambs (11/10, Crit)--The reviews were universally negative, but I went just to tell Bob I love him, and I do, dammit--but any more like this will put my love to the test. What a dismal waste of talent and good intentions.
• Beowulf (11/18, Post 14)--Tries to be all things to all people, and it succeeds pretty well in each of the attempts: it's a mostly faithful adaptation of the Old English epic; it's a fairly sophisticated psychocultural treatise on truth, motive, and mythmaking; it's a terrific special-effects actioner (I saw the 3D version, of course); it's pretty good softcore porn. But somehow it adds up to less than the sum of its parts. A big chunk of my misgivings, I think, stem from the image- and motion-capture technology: it's neither fish nor fowl, and it lacks the life of either photography or honest animation. For all that, a laudably ambitious effort.
• Dan in Real Life (10/20, NoHa)--Occasionally I'll go to a sneak preview because I'm afraid that the reviews will be so bad that I won't want to go then. The reviews I saw of this later were actually pretty generous; that's 'cause I didn't write 'em. This is cynical by-the-demographics filmmaking at its worst. Ugh.
• Canvas (11/14, Crit)--What does it mean that I have to look up a film I saw barely two months ago? Partly that it's a lame, generic title, I guess. Harden is, as always, great, and Pantoliano finally gets an opportunity to be both sympathetic and complex, and he wears it well. But the writing is ordinary, and the stars are kind of hung out to dry.
• The 11th Hour (8/31, Crit)--A good year for angrymaking documentaries, this one environmental. The problem will all of these, of course, is that no one who needs to see 'em does.
• This Is England (9/1, IFC)--A surprising film about skinhead cultures, plural, in the Falklands War era, with a good old-fashioned but unclichéd battle between good and evil for an innocent soul. Probably not top-ten material, but not far off.
• Quiet City (9/1, IFC)--Note to self: mumblecore may not be the best choice for the end of an M4. Actually, I rather intended following this 8:05 film with a 10-something Hannah Takes the Stairs, but instead I came home and put that mumblecore in the Nf queue. As for QC, perfectly OK, but no Funny Ha Ha by a long shot.
• Sunshine (8/11, Crit)--Talk about your lame generic titles. Owes a lot to 2001: A Space Odyssey and maybe even more to Solaris, but several light years short of either.
• The Darjeeling Limited (10/12, Crit)--God help me, I loves Wes Anderson. Wonderfully logic-defying film about a family so cartoonishly dysfunction you can't help but believe it.
• Harry Potter and Whatever the Rest of the Title Was This Year (7/15, Crit)--Gee, I don't know: I remember liking it. I think something very bad happened, then something very good. Or maybe I have it backward.
• Gypsy Caravan (7/7, Crit)--Of the many music documentaries I saw this year, this may be my favorite: Gypsies from four countries and five cultures brought together to tour as a troupe in the U.S. Moving and musical--the hell else do you need?
• Paprika (7/6, Crit)--Fucking trippy Japanese animation--not sure whether I'd have liked it even more stoned, or whether that would have simply painted the mushroom. Plot? Get outta here w/ your jive-ass narrative requirements!

A la recherche des talons des billets perdu

• Dragon Wars (9/15, Crit)--Great goofy fun until it suddenly tries to mean something at the end.
• What Would Jesus Buy? (12/1, Crit)--A much different and much better film than I expected. I had read about the Reverend Billy years before in the Times, but the tone of those stories had encouraged me to dismiss him as a self-aggrandizing nut. Not so: he may be a nut, but he's absolutely sincere in his mission to convert us away from the religion of consumerism.
• Enchanted (11/23, Post 14)--Oh, hell, yeah, I'd follow Amy Adams though a space/time/genre warp too. The film's 100% predictable, but who really cares. Scariest moment is when Susan Sarandon's witch finally appears in the flesh; what's scary is the cognitive dissonance between the crone makeup and the eyes, which, are, jesus!, still Susan Sarandon's eyes.
• Sanshô dayû (Sansho the bailiff) (1954) (12/2, IFC)--I went in ready to be all reverent and shit, and yeah, it was good, but except for Seven Samurai, I guess I just don't get the Japanese-cinematic-masterpiece thing. It's an interesting revenge story, and it looks damned good on the screen. Beyond that, I'm not prepared to go.
• Gone Baby Gone (10/21, Crit)--This suggests that Ben Affleck will direct a great film someday, but this--while terrifically entertaining and occasionally surprising--ain't it yet.
• Michael Clayton (10/14, Crit)--Oh, yeah, right: here's one for the top ten list. Clooney's great, Wilkinson's spectacular (but remember: Oscar doesn't love Afflicted Supporting Guy), and Swinton is so slimy against type that I kept waiting for her to redeem herself. And the scene with the horses is one of the most beautiful, most harrowing of the year--so nice of them to give it to us twice!
• Elizabeth: The Golden Age (10/14, Crit)--Three questions to ask about this: (1) Cate, for god's sake, what were you thinking? (Oh, hey: just realized that's the title of the novel made into Notes on a Scandal, and what Cate's character was thinking in that even made more sense than this.) (2) Were there enough Golden movies last year or what? (3) Do you suppose they gave any thought to titling this Elizabeth I II?
• Se jie (Lust Caution) (10/13, Crit)--Better than generally given credit for, I think--if nothing else, it certainly didn't seem like the 153 minutes or whatever. Sort of a companion piece to Brokeback Mountain, I think: there, love leads to highly inconvenient, potentially fatal lust; here, lust leads to highly inconvenient, potentially fatal love.
• Across the Universe (10/13, Crit)--Filled with trepidation when the lights went down for this. On the one hand, the Beatles represent a huge, sacred, chunk of my life; on the other hand, I've liked Julie Taymor's previous film work (no, I never went to The Lion King, though I guess that was pretty terrif too); on the third hand, the trailer and the reviews led me to believe it quite possible that I would run screaming from the theater. No so! It works, mate--or mostly it works; there are too many risks for every one to pay off. The "She's So Heavy" half of "I Want You/She's So Heavy," e.g., is obvious and weak; but who'll even notice after the absolutely amazing "I Want You" half? Likewise, the story is pretty much obvious and weak (Hair-redux), but that ain't the point.
• No Country for Old Men (11/16, Crit)--At the time I saw it, unquestionably the best film of the year; now I'm less certain. But I am certain--and I say this as a fan of the boys since Blood Simple--this is the Coens' best ever. And part two of a fantastic year for Mr. Jones.
• Rendition (10/20, NoHa)--Yeah, I know the deck's being stacked is part of the point, but it just didn't work for me.
• Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (12/2, IFC)--Wonderfully moving look at a man whom I had long underestimated (and I didn't even know about his wife, who essentially has made him possible). Worth seeing if only for the Smothers Brothers "Big Muddy."
• 65 Revisited (12/2, IFC)--A little more than an hour of outtakes from Bob Dylan: Don't Look Back (which I haven't seen yet, incidentally--though it's high in my queue)--what's the point of that? Hey, sometimes you just have to let art wash over you. Here, here's an answer: you see this and the Seeger film the same day and you get to be reminded how beautiful Joan Baez was and see how beautiful she still is.
• Protagonist (12/2, IFC)--Some have this on their top ten list. Not I. Essentially what I saw were four really interesting shorts edited together into something meant to be synthetic in a good way that's really just synthetic like polyester. The synthetic link is that each of these people goes through the stages of a Greek tragic hero. Well, guess what: the Greeks came up with that formula because it's pretty common, and if you stretch the tropes as much as Jessica Yu does here, we can all be tragic heroes. I'll say this, though: the Greek-theater marionettes are way cool.
• Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten (12/2, IFC)--Yes, that's right: an M5 (see Sansho above), all at the same plex, four of them documentaries, three of them music documentaries. None of those coincidences was the point, but it worked--and the three music docs especially worked, each one hooking into the others. (I'd forgotten, e.g., that before John Mellor became Joe Strummer, he was for a while "Woody," as in Guthrie, as in Seeger's musical godfather. And you get to hear Dylan sing "To Ramona" in both his own film and Strummer's.)

A batch of ticket stubs without a lame spaghetti-western title

• Into the Wild (10/6, Orange)--Read something the other day that precisely matched my sense of the protagonist: something about his being the most social antisocial person ever. Loved also the way he was depicted as making those around him better, and making them get along better, too. Kinda like Jesus, I guess. Kinda Jesuslike in his uncompromisingly self-destructive behavior.
• Deep Water (10/8, Crit)--I confess to having dug around a bit for this ticket stub, rather than taking what came next, because I felt strongly the strangeness of seeing this on the same holiday weekend as the previous: it was the monomaniacal-suicidal-guy season. Of course, this msg is way less appealing and sympathetic than the other--more pathetic than sympathetic, but still, possessed of a determination that can't be shrugged off, for all its craziness.
• 2 Days in Paris (8/25, Crit)--I confess that my critical sense may be clouded a bit by the Delpy factor (it's so much fun just to say "Julie Delpy"), but I found this to be the best Woody Allen movie I've ever seen written and directed by someone other than Woody Allen. And the Adam Goldberg character is as annoying as any ever played by Woody.
• Eastern Promises (9/22, Crit)--OK, I think this Cronenberg-Mortensen partnership is working out pretty well; I didn't think they could mess with my head any more than A History of Violence had, but I was wrong. A long shot for a top-ten spot, and maybe an acting nod to Viggo.
• Talk to Me (8/18, Crit)--Really looked forward to the pairing of Cheadle and Ejiofor, and for a while it works beautifully, but once the news comes that Dr. King has been shot, the film has no more idea what to do than any of us had at the time.
• Superbad (8/19, Crit)--Sorry, not on the bandwagon here: it's a pleasant enough little entertainment, but there are people calling this one of the best films of the year? Uh, no.
• Venus (2/2, Crit)--Whoa, we have gotten into the time machine, haven't we? As best I can recall, O'Toole is irresistible (always a good bet), I'd like to hear more from the Rickie Lee Jones-sounding woman in the soundtrack (OK, OK, looked her up: Corinne Bailey Rae), and otherwise, feh.
• It Happened One Night (1934) (1/7, Crit)--If only for the "Man on the Flying Trapeze" sequence, it was worth seeing this as part of a big crowd, even though the damn theater is incapable of projecting a pre-widescreen film properly. Yes, I've asked them about it: they swear it's a technological issue--they don't show enough such films to justify the expense of the lens-attachment doodad that would make it possible. I don't know from projectors, but isn't there just a knob you can twist to pull the image back to leave blank screen left and right, rather than running the image off the top and bottom. At least there's no dancing in this one, and no Ilsa holding a gun at waist level so that we can't see what Rick's reacting to. I think this was my last 4:3 film here.
• Notes on a Scandal (1/6, Crit)--Not merely wonderful performances by the two wonderful performers (though that, certainly--but make it three: Nighy's terrific as well), this is a far better film than the reviews suggested.
• Georgia Rules (5/12, Crit)--And so is this, while we're at it. In fact, this gets the 2007 Oscar for worst-botched advertising campaign, with the trailer that suggests fluff and the poster that depicts the three women as best pals. Hey, you marketing cretins: (1) there's an audience for "dark"; and (2) the audience for fluff is apt to get really pissed off when lured into the theater on false pretenses. Another thing: I hope Ms. Lohan gets her personal shit together sometime soon, because it would be unfair to me to be deprived of her potentially Hepburnesque body of work because of her own pathetic weaknesses of the flesh.
• Das Leben der Anderen (The lives of others) (3/3, Crit)--When I saw this I was still ticked off that Pan's Labyrinth got nothing on Oscar night, but I have to admit that this was a deserving winner--and not just for the Foreign Language ghetto, either.
• La Doublure (The valet) (5/12, Crit)--Pleasant enough, though it's hard to accept Daniel Auteuil as an asshole. Best, most surprising thing about the film is that the hot young girlfriend is actually allowed to have a story, and a brain. A doublure, incidentally (yes, of course I had to look it up), is a theater understudy, and The Understudy would have been a much better English title.
• Breaking and Entering (3/2, Crit)--Had to remind myself what this was; that's how memorable it was. Oh! But I just remembered the best thing about it: Vera Farmiga, not even mentioned in the Netflix blurb, as an eastern European hooker.
• Factory Girl (2/16, Crit)--I had read most of Edie before the film came to town, so I pretty much knew the cast of characters, but I didn't much care.

OK, that's all the ticket stubs from the table in the entryway, leaving just the ones on the dresser and the ones still in the envelope. Sixty or so down, how many to go? And more to the point, will I get through all of them and be able to make a top ten list by Oscar night?

The man with no ticket stub

Hey, look: I found the envelope where I'd been putting my 2007 stubs until I started to strew them all over the house--let's see whether I even remember having seen these!

• Killer of Sheep (1977) (4/7, IFC)--Not sure I'm quite as enthusiastic about this recently resurfaced minimalist narrative by Charles Burnett, but it's certainly gritty, intense, and unique.
• Die Große Stille (Into Great Silence) (5/6, Crit)--Here's another hard sell: nearly three hours of near silence about Carthusian monks. Add to that the fact that I'd done my annual Connecticut Food Bank Walk Against Hunger that day, with shoes that weren't broken in and were killing my feet, and how could I have loved it? Yet I did.
• Zodiac (3/4, Post 14)--Manohla Dargis of the Times seems to think this is the best thing . . . well, since she overrated Inland Empire a year ago. Don't get me wrong: both films are more than worth seeing. But not Citizen Kane. Or even No Country for Old Men.
• Zoo (5/27, IFC)--Wooooo! Men fucking and being fucked by horses! I know I read at least one review that raved that the filmmakers avoided sensationalism. OK, I'll grant that given the subject matter, it's as tastefully done as it can be. But as Stan Marsh would say, dude, this is pretty fucked up here.
• Away from Her (5/28, Crit)--I was already a big Sarah Polley fan, but it just ain't right that someone who's not yet 30 should be able to burrow into Alzheimer's so convincingly. Also, Oscar-worthy performances by both Christie and Pinsent--and if the Academy loved Afflicted Guy as much in supporting roles as in leads, Michael Murphy would be a lock, too.
• The Wind That Shakes the Barley (4/14, Mad)--Don't remember much about it, except that I was a bit disappointed; there just doesn't seem to be a lot of variety in these Irish-independence films.
• Duck Soup (1933) (3/25, Crit)--"Something must be done! War would mean a prohibitive increase in our taxes." "Hey, I got an uncle lives in Texas." "No, I'm talking about taxes--money, dollars!" "Dallas! There's a-where my uncle lives! Dallas, Texas!"
• Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia (Curse of the Golden Flower) (6/8, Crit)--Oh, all these way-back-when mythic Chinese people-walking-in-the-air and huge-armies-in-gaudily-colorful-dress films are beautiful and exciting, but this one didn't break any new ground, or stick with me enough that I could remember what I'd seen from the ticket stub's "The Golden." [1/14 update: oops: here's the "Curse of th" ticket stub that is obiously for this movie (same venue, 1/12). But the good news is that I've figured out what "The Golden" was . . . ]
• Nuovomondo (The golden door) (6/8, Crit)--A magnificent depiction of the immigrant experience from homeland desperation to Ellis Island degradation. It's like that one part of The Godfather, Part II expanded to feature length.
• Year of the Dog (4/28, Orange)--But in dog years, that's only about 52 days. OK, but not up to my anticipation. Fine performance by Sarsgaard, though.
• Psycho (1960) (4/21, Crit)--Now this is a film that's enhanced by viewing it in a big crowd--though it probably would have been enhanced even more if I'd gone to the 11:30pm show rather than the 11am.
• 28 Weeks Later (5/19, Post 14)--Well, I don't think I'll need to own it, as I needed to own 28 Days Later, but as sequels go, it's pretty effective. But now that [SPOILER ALERT] the virus has reached France, what's the third one gonna be called? 28 mois plus tard?
• Hot Fuzz (4/21, Crit)--Brutally funny, mixing slapstick with smart allusions.
• Day Night Day Night (5/27, IFC)--Stayed for a late show so that I could see this astonishly intense story of a suicide bomber whose motives are murky at best (that being part of the point). Let's see more of Luisa Williams.
• Paris, je t'aime (5/27, Sun)--Great concept, and a few good shorts--I remember liking Alexander Payne's, and I seem to recall that Christopher Doyle's worked for me, but too many of them suffer from novelist-trying-to-write-a-short-story syndrome: they try to wrap things up with O. Henry surprise endings. I went despite the reviews, not because of them, and I'm glad to have had a chance to see it--and I'm in for the upcoming New York, I Love You--but I wish there had been more to it.
• The TV Set (5/11, Crit)--One of the pleasantest surprises of the year--maybe I haven't given David Duchovny enough credit.

The good, the bad, and the ticket stubs

• Goya's Ghosts (7/22, Crit)--Courageous performance by Portman, but a generally weak narrative and a waste of talent.
• You Kill Me (7/21, Orange)--Hadn't heard much good about this, so was pleasantly surprised. Nice weird chemistry between Leoni and Sir Ben and an interesting and sympathetic treatment of AA.
• In the Valley of Elah (9/28, Crit)--OK, let me just say right now that Crash was the most overrated film of 2005, one of the front-runners of the millennium, so I was as predisposed to resist Paul Haggis as his namesake Scottish "food." But everywhere the earlier film was obvious and heavy-handed, this is morally blurred and ambiguous. Excellent performances all around, including what I assumed was the best I'd ever see from Tommy Lee Jones, an assumption that lasted about ten weeks.
• In the Shadow of the Moon (9/22, Crit)--A bunch of old talking heads talking about what a swell time they had a generation ago . . . going to the fucking moon! The universally good reviews could not prepare me for how captivating those old guys and their storytelling would be. Remarkable film.
• King of California (9/21, Crit)--Jeez, is Michael Douglas a freakin' national treasure, or what? This could have been nothing but goofy, but Douglas's belief in his role and in the story make it--while no less goofy--irresistible. And Evan Rachel Wood adds the right touch as the daughter who is tired of trying to believe in him but can't resist him any more than we can. Heartwarming but also smart.
• No End in Sight (9/3, Orange)--Haven't we been made angry about this enough by now? Why is there still a place for films like this? In any case, this is utterly convincing and somehow manages to teach us things we didn't already know about what a fucked-up situation the Iraq occupation is.
• Young Frankenstein (1974) (8/26, Crit)--I'd been saying for years that I needed to see this again, so I appreciated my friendly downtown cinema's showing it on a Sunday a.m. for four bucks. Everything was as funny as I remembered, and "Puttin' on the Ritz"--though it's the politically correct, non-Harlem version--reminded me of a song I needed to add to the New York songs collection I was putting together at the time.
• Resurrecting the Champ (8/25, Crit)--Sam Jackson's scenery chewing beats the hell out of Josh Harnett's blandness, but: no.
• (The Earrings of) Madame De . . . (1953) (10/7, IFC)--Wonderful Max Ophüls film about deception, hilarious throughout in its breakneck rush to inevitable disaster. Currently unavailable in a region 1 DVD, dammit.
• Romance & Cigarettes (2005) (10/7, Quad)--How in the hell can a film with so much fun and so much brains sit in the can for two years after a successful debut at the Venice Film Festival, while things like . . . well, like Resurrecting the Champ hop right onto the screen. Three words: James Gandolfini sings. Five more: and so does Chris Walken (not just talk musically, per Hairspray). Not a great film--it falls off considerably in the thrid act, when it feels compelled to get serious, but if you haven't seen it--and unless you saw it in Venice or New York or LA, you haven't--pop it to the top of your Netflix queue as soon as the DVD breaks.
• Helvetica (10/7, IFC)--Yeah, it's a documentary about a text font; got a problem with that? Actually, it's about the idea of fonts, about how the way we react to products and candidates (sorry: that's a subset of the first) and transit systems is shaped by . . . the way the letters are shaped. Still not convinced? Trust me: see it.
• Toots (10/7, Quad)--A documentary about legendary restaurateur Shor and the decline and near-fall of the New York that had made him, and that he'd helped make. No indication of a DVD coming.
• The Kingdom (9/29, Crit)--Solid actioner, with just enough ambiguity about Westerners sticking their noses into the Middle East to make it a not quite guilty pleasure.
• Margot at the Wedding (12/14, Crit)--Don't ever tell me that Nicole Kidman isn't fearless--I hated her character in this and The Golden Compass on consecutive days. This didn't measure up to Squid and the Whale for me, but Noah Baumbach is still the go-to guy for pathological family dysfunction.
• I'm Not There (12/15, Cine)--I don't get it: are people not canonizing Cate Blanchett because she just makes it look too damned easy? An amazing film, though I have to agree with those (including the Harvey Weinstein, I gather) who pleaded with Todd Haynes to shorten this by about the length of the Billy the Kid (Richard Gere) version of Dylan. Not that Gere isn't good, but it's the least compelling and the least integral part, and it would have been a better film as, say, 115 min. than at 135. Still, that's a quibble: seems likely to be on my top 10 for the year.
• Atonement (12/23, Crit)--A noble effort at greatness, and it comes pretty close--but I guess the effort shows too much. I will say that I finally found James McAvoy impressive instead of annoying, and of course I'll follow Keira anywhere. But like everyone else who saw this, I'm most eager to see what Saoirse Ronan has in store. By the way, this is one of my favorite novels of recent years, but fortunately I'd forgotten enough of it not to do that picky "Hey, that's not the way he does it in the book!" thing.
• Charlie Wilson's War (12/23, Crit)--The most rollicking good fun movie to have a really depressing ending in a long time. Well, actually, I was wondering about the depressing ending throughout--sorry, but it's kinda hard to cheer for dudes knocking down MIGs with Stingers they're gonna be using against us soon enough. Tom and Julia do their bits, but the movie really belongs to Philip Seymour Hoffman--and then, of course, there's Amy Adams's ponytail.
• The Kite Runner (12/24, Crit)--Logistics weren't quite right to see the two Afghanistan movies on the same day, but successive days was sufficient. A well-made film with an utter lack of moral ambiguity.

A few ticket stubs more

• The Golden Compass (12/15/07, NoHa)--Well, this is entertaining enough, and the effects are impressive, but I couldn't help thinking how hard it was trying to be Lord of the Rings, and how far it was falling. I like the newcomer, Dakota Blue Richards, but I would advise New Line to get the rest of the trilogy in the can asap if they're going to do it, because this kid looks like she's about six months away from becoming seriously hot, and while I haven't read His Dark Materials, I doubt very much that "hot" is right for the character.
• The Savages (12/21/07, Crit)--Painfully good, and good and painful. Long shot for my top 10 list and Oscar noms for Philip Seymour Hoffman and My Future Wife Laura Linney--and how about one for my former neighbor Stephen Trask's score?
• Juno (12/25/07, Crit)--Fell in love with the trailer first time I saw it, but my ex said "trying too hard," and that reservation holds for the film as well: it desperately wants us to find it charming and literary and irresistible. Despite that effort, it is pretty hard to resist, and it's certainly literate as hell: I hope we'll hear a lot for from screenwriter Diablo Cody, not because she used to be a stripper but because it's so darned much fun to say "Diablo Cody."
• Broken English (7/22/07, Crit)--Wanted to love this ('cause for one thing, "Zoe Cassavetes" is almost as much fun to say as "Diablo Cody"; then too, there's the presence of My Future Wife Parker Posey), but I had to settle for "like."
• American Gangster (11/4/07, Crit)--Denzel's great, Russell's great, and even the strategy of keeping the stars apart until near the end works pretty well, but ultimately the film is less than the sum of its parts.
• On the Town (1949) (11/4/07, Crit)--Used to love this, then stopped even liking it, but thought it was worth paying four bucks to give it another chance. Sinatra and Gene Kelly, music by Leonard Bernstein and Comden and Green, directed by Stanley Donen--how could it miss? Dunno, but with a few exceptions (the opening "New York, New York" is splendid, despite the city's Code-dictated demotion to "a wonderful" rather than "a hell of a" town), it misses.
• Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (11/3/07, Orange)--Another one I wanted to like more than I could--but this is the one Hoffman will be nominated for. And is it just me, or has Marisa Tomei been getting gradually more beautiful and sexier over the past 15 years? If she's this hot at 43, she should look as good as Julie Christie when she's 66.
• Sweeney Todd (12/22/07, Crit)--Not sure how, but the leads' singing--amateurish in the case of Depp, borderline inept in the case of Bonham Carter--works perfectly. A beautiful bloodfest--a top 10? We'll see how things shake down.
• I Am Legend (12/15/07, NoHa)--Mostly a perfectly OK zombie flick, but sensational special effects in turning Manhattan into a ghost town.
• Southland Tales (12/8/07, Crit)--David Lynch + sunlight = Richard Kelly. A more ambitious and weirder follow-up to Donnie Darko--and that, as my self-described poor-white-trash grad school friend from Shreveport, La., says, is tall cotton. Not sure it's great, but it sure as hell ain't boring--and guess what? Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson can act! I swear!

A fistful of ticket stubs

This is the first of however many posts of it takes me to dispose of all the ticket stubs I've accumulated over . . . what? . . . the past year? the past 18 months? Whatever: to the extent I can curb my blabbery, these will be quick and dirty mini-micro reviews.

• Bee Movie (11/3/07, P14)--Some fine moments, but mostly routine (except, of course, for the implication of not only interspecies, not only intergenus, but interfamily sex, for which I'm searching in vain for some sort of honey pun).
• Lars and the Real Girl (10/28/07, Crit)--Surprisingly sweet--not at all what you associate w/ the phrase inflatable doll w/ French and Greek features.
• The King of Kong (9/16/07, Crit)--Full disclosure: my ticket stub read only "The King of," and I had no idea what this was, so searched that phrase on IMDb, finally finding it at position 270. An OK film about souls perhaps even more pathetic than those who blog movie reviews.
• Steal a Pen for Me (11/24/07, Quad)--A perfectly worthwhile movie, but much like the hundred other Holocaust survivor films we've seen.
• Wristcutters: A Love Story (11/24/07, Quad)--Oh, my, what a mindfuck! Most of the world will never see this in a theater, but glom onto it when it breaks in DVD: basically, it's The Wizard of Oz with a Repo Man sensibility. A top 10 candidate.
• Control (11/24/07, VE)--See Steal a Pen comment just above, but for "Holocaust survivor" read "self-destructive rock dudes." The revelation here was that the Village East multiplex has preserved what presumably is what used to be its lone theater: a gorgeous, Egyptian-themed, double-balconied movie palace. I had been here probably at least a dozen times without realizing they had any screens that weren't in chop-boxes, and my ex, who lives in Brooklyn and goes to a lot more movies at VE than I do, was equally ignorant of the place. The explanation, I assume, is that since VE shows a mix of arthouse and blockbuster stuff, the big auditorium is usually reserved for the blockbuster; why they were screening this distinctly arthouse flick there that day is beyond me--but I'm damned glad they were.
• Who Is Norman Lloyd? (11/24/07, FF)--A beautiful little picture about an amazing if fairly obscure actor (hint: he was the Dr. Auschlander in St. Elsewhere, and in In Her Shoes [aka the most underrated film of 2005] he was the blind guy who makes Maggie read poetry to him) and blacklist survivor.
• "Crin-Blanc (White Mane)" (1953) and "Le Ballon rouge (The Red Balloon)" (1956) (11/24/07, FF)--Had never seen either of these: beautiful, but everyone but me already knew that. (Must say I was surprised, though not in a bad way, by the roughness, even violence, of the first film--and [SPOILER ALERT!!!]by its suicide-pact conclusion.) Superalert readers will have noticed that I saw the past five films (well, six films, five programs) in a single day in Manhattan. Some other time we'll discuss the M5. But now it's time for dinner . . . and a movie!